Hidemyhistory.co Redirects - How to remove

Hidemyhistory.co is a privacy search engine that is a bit misleading. It promises to encrypt your data between your computer and Hidemyhistory.co, implying that other search engines don’t do that and giving people a false impression of their privacy being in danger. Because it is not very useful, gets installed via bundling, and behaves similarly to a browser hijacker, Hidemyhistory.co can be called a potentially unwanted program. It’s fine to use, but it’s not really any good.

Hidemyhistory.co is a potentially unwanted program:

Classification	Potentially unwanted program.
Problems with Hide My History / Hidemyhistory.co	Oversells what it can offer, gets installed by people unintentionally, reads your data on all websites.
How it was installed	Bundled with free programs, bundled with other browser extensions, advertised online.
Remove Hide My History	Uninstall unwanted browser extensions, remove malware from your device (Spyhunter for Windows, Combo Cleaner for macOS, Malwarebytes, etc.).

Search engine

Hidemyhistory.co sells itself on it encrypting your search queries so that nobody can spy on them. This is misleading because such encryption is already the norm online. Any site whose address starts with “https” instead of “http” and that has a closed padlock displayed next to its address at the top of your browser is already doing exactly what Hidemyhistory.co promises to do. Click on the padlock next to this site’s address: your browser will tell you that the connection is secure and/or encrypted. It is nothing special.

Some privacy engines nad VPN companies spread misinformation about this, but don’t give in. Most of the time that you’re online, your traffic is already encrypted using, as some marketing people say, military-grade encryption.

Hidemyhistory.co seems to be yet another low-effort product by the same people who made Searchencrypted.com, Searchincognito.com, Encryptedsearch.org, Discretesearch.com, Hidemysearches.com, Searchsafe.org, Searchencrypt.com, Historyhide.com, Searchsafe.org, and a few others. Even Hide My History extension’s privacy policy links to Historyhide.com. The company responsible can be found in that privacy policy ad it’s Eightpoint. What a surprise.

Hidemyhistory.co is supported by ads among search results – just like most search engines. Bing, Google, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo also put ads next to your search results to make money. Hidemyhistory.co is different because the amount of ads s pretty big sometimes. It’s kind of hard to find useful info when you have to scroll past screens of ads. Even simple nouns give me 18 ads for 10 results. I understand that Hidemyhistory.co needs to make money, but when ads outnumber real results, the search engine becomes unusable.

Hidemyhistory.co’s privacy policy is nice, as it claims that your IP and search history are not stored. If that’s true, that is nice. Most search engines store your history. This record is completely separate from the history in your browser, which is just some data on your device. For example, Google lets you check what data it has on you (and lets you delete it).

Browser extension

There exists a Hidemyhistory.co browser extension, called Hide My History – A Private History Engine. It redirects searches on Google, Bing, and other engines to Hidemyhistory.co. It’s good that Hidemyhistory.co provides a link to go to a few popular search sites and that it gives you a way to disable redirects, even though the settings are not granular enough and do not allow you to whitelist another search engine.

Also, Hide My History does not redirect away from Yahoo. Eightpoint does use Yahoo a lot for its other browser extensions (as do other hijackers – that’s just how browser hijackers work). It also does not redirect away from its sibling search engines, which is understandable.

Hide My History has around eighty thousand users on Google Chrome and other Chromium browsers. No ratings or reviews, though. This is pretty standard for Eightpoint’s extensions. Sometimes there are a few reviews, often by disgruntled users.

The lack of reviews compared to the number of users probably indicates that many of Hidemyhistory.co’s users don’t know that they even have this extension. I can confirm that. The first time I installed Hidemyhistory.co, it was when it was bundled with Email Access Here. I didn’t notice Hide My History because it was overwritten by Your Search Tool, which also was bundled with (and was also made by Eightpoint). Nevertheless, Hide My History was installed, including its ability to read and change my data on the websites that I visit, which makes me really uncomfortable, because Hide My History certainly does not need that permission to function correctly. Luckily, the extension is simple to remove.

How to remove Hidemyhistory.co

If you want to keep using Hidemyhistory.co, go ahead, just know that the company that made it lives on browser hijackers, many of which have the sort of privacy-breaking behavior that Hidemyhistory.co claims to protect you from.

If you decide to remove the Hide My History extension, it’s pretty easy – you can do that in your browser settings. Just don’t stop there – check all of your extensions, their permissions, their privacy policies, their developers, and their reviews. Often people had a problem with their browser that was caused by a browser extension that they trusted, so it’s important to be thorough.

You might want to check your computer for malware and other potentially unwanted programs, as those do sometimes bring browser hijackers to your computer. You can use an anti-malware program like Spyhunter for PC, Combo Cleaner for Mac, or Malwarebytes to see if any suspicious programs are found on your device.

Automatic Malware removal tools

Manually uninstall unwanted extensions

TopRemoving Hidemyhistory.co Redirects from Chrome

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Google Chrome window. Select “Settings”.
  
• Click “Extensions” on the left menu bar.
• Go through the extensions list and remove programs you do not need, especially similar to Hidemyhistory.co Redirects. Click on the trash bin icon next to Hidemyhistory.co Redirects or other add-ons you want to remove.
  
• Press on the “Remove” button on the Confirmation window.
  
• If unsure, you can disable them temporarily.
  
• Restart Chrome.

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings

If you are still experiencing any issues related to Hidemyhistory.co Redirects, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Click on Chrome’s menu button (three horizontal lines) and select Settings.
  
• Scroll to the end of the page and click on the Reset settings button.
  
• Click on the Reset button on the confirmation box.
  

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.

TopRemoving Hidemyhistory.co Redirects from Firefox

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Mozilla window and select the “Add-ons” icon (or press Ctrl+Shift+A on your keyboard).
  
• Go through Extensions and Addons list, remove everything Hidemyhistory.co Redirects related and items you do not recognise. If you do not know the extension and it is not made by Mozilla, Google, Microsoft, Oracle or Adobe then you probably do not need it.
  

(Optional) Reset your browser’s settings If you are still experiencing any issues related to Hidemyhistory.co Redirects, reset the settings of your browser to its default settings.

• Click on the menu button on the top right corner of a Mozilla Firefox window. Click on the Help button.
  
• Choose Troubleshooting Information on the Help menu.
  
• Click on the Reset Firefox button.
  
• Click on the Reset Firefox button on the confirmation box. Mozilla Firefox will close and change the settings to default.
  

If you cannot reset your browser settings and the problem persists, scan your system with an anti-malware program.